Hannah's door open, so you'll have good air--she isn't in there. She's
writing letters in my room, Now here's a book, and you _may_ read, but
I should prefer you to sleep," she nodded brightly as she went out and
shut the door quietly. Then, like the guilty conspirator she was, she
went down-stairs to wait for Arkwright.

It was a fine plan. Arkwright was due at ten o'clock--Billy had
specially asked him to come at that hour. He would not know, of course,
that Alice Greggory was in the house; but soon after his arrival Billy
meant to excuse herself for a moment, slip up-stairs and send Alice
Greggory down for a book, a pair of scissors, a shawl for Aunt
Hannah--anything would do for a pretext, anything so that the girl might
walk into the living-room and find Arkwright waiting for her alone.
And then--What happened next was, in Billy's mind, very vague, but very
attractive as a nucleus for one's thoughts, nevertheless.

All this was, indeed, a fine plan; but--(If only fine plans would not so
often have a "but"!) In Billy's case the "but" had to do with things
so apparently unrelated as were Aunt Hannah's clock and a negro's coal
wagon. The clock struck eleven at half-past ten, and the wagon dumped
itself to destruction directly in front of a trolley car in which sat
Mr. M. J. Arkwright, hurrying to keep his appointment with Miss Billy
Neilson. It was almost half-past ten when Arkwright finally rang the
bell at Hillside. Billy greeted him so eagerly, and at the same time
with such evident disappointment at his late arrival, that Arkwright's
heart sang with joy.

"But there's a rehearsal at quarter of eleven," exclaimed Billy, in
answer to his hurried explanation of the delay; "and this gives so
little time for--for--so little time, you know," she finished in
confusion, casting frantically about in her mind for an excuse to hurry
up-stairs and send Alice Greggory down before it should be quite too
late.

No wonder that Arkwright, noting the sparkle in her eye, the agitation
in her manner, and the embarrassed red in her cheek, took new courage.
For so long had this girl held him at the end of a major third or a
diminished seventh; for so long had she blithely accepted his every word
and act as devotion to music, not herself--for so long had she done all
this that he had come to fear that never would she do anything else. No
wonder then, that now, in the soft radiance of the strange, new light on
her face, his own face